


Pictures of You

by mcgarrygirl78



Series: Feels Like Heaven [35]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:32:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7033729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcgarrygirl78/pseuds/mcgarrygirl78
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I think this one is my favorite.  You look so into what you’re reading and you're looking over your glasses, which is always cute.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pictures of You

“Guess what the temperature is in Paris right now?” Olivia looked up from her tablet.

“Tell me.” Ed glanced away from his phone.

“It’s 52 and raining. It’s actually supposed to rain for the next 4 days.”

“Well we’re not leaving for seven days.”

“I hope it doesn’t rain the whole time we’re there.” She went back to looking at her tablet.

“We’ll buy some big umbrellas at the airport. And make sure that Noah has a slicker and some Wellies so he can run around jumping in puddles before nap time. Rain is not going to ruin Paris.”

“Rain is definitely not going to ruin Paris.” She looked at him again. “What are you doing down there?”

Olivia was resting at the top of the bed. She had been reading a magazine on her tablet and then began to look up things about Paris. It had been so long since she dreamed of it, read about it, and she would be there in week. Ed was lying at the bottom of the bed, his feet near her shoulder. He seemed to be fiddling with his phone.

“Truth?” he asked.

“Yes, Captain.”

“I was playing Nun Attack and intermittently pausing between worlds to take pictures of you while you weren't looking. That was probably wrong, now that I think about it. But you're beautiful.”

“Is that really what you were doing?”

“Yes. Also, Ronin is lying across me so it’s kinda hard to get up.”

“Are you winning your game?” she asked. “Nun Attack?”

“Yes, it’s about nuns with machine guns who battle skeletons, werewolves, and such while trying to get gold coins and jump over or slide under rings of fire. I find it relaxing. I was also getting my ass kicked. The first three worlds are easy. Then the game moves faster and the obstacles are larger. I jumped over a ring of fire and a werewolf threw a boulder at me.”

“Don’t even show me; I’ll get addicted. What are you going to do with the covert pictures of me?”

“Look at them when I'm stuck at work and want to be with you. It could be another month or so before my transfer paperwork comes through. Especially with me taking this time off. But I need this time off…we need this time off.”

“Yes we do.” Liv nodded. “I know the transfer is going to go through without any snags and…”

“No snags?” Ed smirked. “Sometimes I think 1PP is a giant snag. I imagine right now it’s sitting on someone’s desk who’s on vacation. And when someone comes to collect things from that inbox it’ll land on the floor and then be swept into the trash by the janitorial staff.”

“Stop.” She laughed. “It’s not that bad. It can be bad but not that bad.”

“Close though.”

“I won't disagree there. Do you have someone over there you can talk to?”

“I could probably call Tasha…she knows everything. We haven’t talked in almost a year so I'm sure she’ll give me shit. But she’ll also give me information if she has it.”

“Who's Tasha?” Liv tried not to say it in that voice. 

Ed was allowed to have female friends; she was not that kind of girlfriend. She trusted him implicitly and after what happened to him in his marriage she knew that he would never be unfaithful to her. Almost 20% of the NYPD were women and those numbers rose with each class graduating from the Academy. No doubt someone on the force as long as Ed, despite his issues with being disliked, would be friends with some of them.

“Tasha Wilson graduated the Academy four years after me and was one of the first women to train for SWAT. She didn’t make it but was noticed by some folks who put hostage negotiation in her ear. That’s where we met. She's a lieutenant; should be a captain but she raised a couple of kids and never took the test. I can give her a call tomorrow and ask.”

“It won't hurt. Actually, it will probably put your mind at ease.”

“My mind is totally at ease.” Ed said. “I know how slow they are. I have no doubt the transfer will go through, I just want it to be before my retirement dinner.”

“I wanna see those covert pictures you were taking of me.” Liv changed the subject. She put her tablet down on the bed, drawing her knees in close to her chest.

“Up Ronin, up.” Ed said. The dog looked at him, unimpressed for a moment. Then he got off him and jumped down from the bed. Most likely he was going to Noah’s room where he never felt unwelcome. Dogs could sometimes be drama queens. Ed crawled to the top of the bed with Olivia and opened his photo gallery. “I think this one is my favorite. You look so into what you’re reading and you're looking over your glasses, which is always cute.”

“You're never allowed to get on me about covert pictures again.” Olivia laughed. She gently took the phone out of his hand and scrolled through. He had about 6 pictures of her on there as she’d read an article on the life and death of Charlie Chaplin in _Vanity Fair_. She'd gone on quite a face journey and Ed captured it well.

“My adorable, covert pictures of you don’t end up on Instagram.”

“Well send this one to me,” Liv pointed to the picture. “I think it would look cute on my page. I don’t often get myself from someone else’s intimate point of view.”

“What do you post on there? I hope it’s just more than pictures of me sleeping with the dog.”

“I've never shown it to you?” she looked at him.

“No.” Ed shook his head.

“Hmm, I thought I had.” She grabbed her personal phone from the nightstand, typing in the password to wake it up. Liv scrolled to the third screen and pressed the Instagram icon. It opened straight to her page, but she touched a button so Ed could see multiple pictures at once. Then she handed Ed her phone.

He didn’t have to scroll long to find a picture of himself. He and Ronin were lying on the couch relaxing. When he touched the picture it opened and said ‘ _The Captain at rest, Mets are playing_.’ #chillout #Ronin #manandhisbestfriend #baseball.

“These are hashtags, right?” Ed asked.

“Yes. You can make them up, have fun with it or there are ones that people all over Instagram use to connect. You can search for pictures just using a hashtag you're interested in.”

“How did you get so into this?”

“Noah. I've never really been into Facebook but I like Instagram because it’s more immediate. It’s also a bit more anonymous. Even though people can see your face, they can't see your whole life, nor do they expect to. I liked that aspect of it. Where else could I get that and post endless pictures of my incredibly cute child?”

And there were definitely plenty of pictures of Noah. Liv had over 500 posts and Ed was sure that about 75% of them were her son. He found a couple of himself sleeping. Maybe he was kind of cute when he did that. He found one of him in his Superman tee shirt. He even found one of him cleaning his weapon with the hashtag safety first. 

It wasn’t as if he was opposed to having his picture online, he believed all three of his kids had Instagram and Twitter. Looking through Liv’s followers it looked as if at least Cait followed her on this platform. It was just strange to him that he didn’t feel as if he was participating at all. He would take a picture, or have one taken of him, and it ended up in the vast wasteland of the internet. It was a slightly uncomfortable prospect.

“Some of these pictures are really good, Liv.” He handed the phone back.

“It’s the iPhone. I think it makes almost everyone a good photographer. I love it because it makes me more observant of the world around me. I see something beautiful or unique or downright strange and I'm taking a picture. Then I get to show people that may never see something like that.”

“Do you know all the people you follow?”

“No. I follow more than a few puppy blogs. I follow a woman in Odessa who always posts pictures of her flower garden and her little winery that are amazing. I follow a 14 year old kid from Spanish Harlem, his blog is called Streets is ours, and he just captures the area so well. It’s a great way to have eyes all over the world. There’s one blog, Rebecca Bathory Art, she goes all over the world photographing spooky places. And she never writes the exact place on her blog because she just wants to show its beauty, not have people go there and disturb it.”

“Hmm.” Ed said. “I imagine this can be a really fulfilling hobby.”

“It is. You don’t have to speak, you just snap. Wanna take a bedtime selfie?”

“Is it bedtime already?” he snaked his arms around her waist.

“Wanna take an adorable selfie before we get naked and the cameras get turned off?” she asked laughing.

“Why the hell not?”

“OK, kiss my cheek on three.” Liv turned her camera on, pushing the button so it was on selfie mode. “One, two, three.”

Ed kissed her cheek. He watched in awe as Liv hit share and then the Instagram icon again. She was trying to choose from about 15 different filters and settled on something black and white. It was nice. Then her fingers moved deftly across the letters while she typed out a caption. ‘ _Oh Captain, my Captain. Ending a very nice evening with the man himself_.’ #mothertucker #lovelovelove #thiskiss.

“How about hashtag, seven days till Paris.” Ed said.

“Ooh, that’s a good one. I like that one.” Liv smiled as she typed it in and then touched the arrow at the top of her phone. 10 seconds later, probably sooner, the picture popped up on the phone.

“Can people comment on it?”

“Sure.” She nodded. “They can also just press the little heart to show they like it. I get comments sporadically but lots of likes. It’s fun.”

“Cait loves it, I know that. She takes pictures of everything now.”

“We follow each other. I guess you haven’t seen her page either.”

“No. Can I ask you to show it to me?”

“Sure.” Olivia scrolled through her followers, found CaitTheGreat, and clicked on it.

There was his almost 15 year old in all of her glory. Selfies, pictures of her shoes, random photos of street cats and cool cars. There were pictures of what she was listening to on her iPod and her with friends at eateries or in the school cafeteria. He found one of her and her mother that looked as if they got along much more than he knew they did. He smiled at pictures of Cait and Noah and a few in her lacrosse uniform. 

That was her whole teenage life on display; part of him wanted to look for hours while another part felt he was invading her privacy. Not that anyone got privacy on the World Wide Web. Ed wasn’t going to give himself a migraine thinking about how many creeper boys and men were ogling his baby’s Instagram page. He didn’t always have to think like a cop, but thinking like a dad was inevitable.

“You ever feel like you're missing out on something and aren’t even sure how to find your way there?” he asked.

“If you're talking about Instagram, you're not missing a ton of stuff. And you could always join. It’s as simple as downloading it, taking a picture, and sharing it. You can even take pictures directly on Instagram and let them do all the work with filters and crops. Try it for two weeks…see if you like it. It'll double the amount of Paris pictures we can put online.”

“A very good reason indeed.” Ed nodded.

“Are you being facetious?”

“A little, baby. Not a lot but a little.”

“You wanna just turn the lights out and get cuddly?” Liv put her phone and tablet on the nightstand. Ed was doing the same with his. 

He reached over, gingerly taking the reading glasses off her face. His were up on the dresser somewhere, he hadn’t used them tonight. She closed her eyes when he kissed her softly. Putting her glasses on the nightstand, Ed took her face in his hands and kissed her again.

“I love you.” Liv took hold of the bottom of his tee shirt before pulling it over his head. Then she turned off the lamp.

“Love you too, baby. Always.”

***


End file.
